Ellerman bombs are transient brightenings of the extended wings of the solar Balmer lines in emerging active regions. We describe their properties in the ultraviolet lines sampled by the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS), using simultaneous imaging spectroscopy in Hα with the Swedish 1m Solar Telescope (SST) and ultraviolet images from the Solar Dynamics Observatory for Ellerman bomb detection and identification. We select multiple co-observed Ellerman bombs for detailed analysis. The IRIS spectra strengthen the view that Ellerman bombs mark reconnection between bipolar kilogauss fluxtubes with the reconnection and the resulting bi-directional jet located within the solar photosphere and shielded by overlying chromospheric fibrils in the cores of strong lines. The spectra suggest that the reconnecting photospheric gas underneath is heated sufficiently to momentarily reach stages of ionization normally assigned to the transition region and the corona. We also analyze similar outburst phenomena that we classify as small flaring arch filaments and ascribe to higher-located reconnection. They have different morphology and produce hot arches in million-Kelvin diagnostics.

While the nature of the heating mechanisms in the corona remains elusive their associated cooling is also a poorly known but a far less observationally restrictive subject. In this work, we analyse coordinated observations spanning chromospheric, transition region (TR) and coronal temperatures at very high resolution which reveal essential characteristics of thermally unstable plasmas. Coronal rain is found to be a highly multi-thermal phenomenon with a high degree of co-spatiality in the multi-wavelength emission. EUV darkening and quasi-periodic intensity variations are found to be strongly correlated to coronal rain and especially 'showers'. Progressive cooling of coronal rain is observed, leading to a height dependence of the emission. Furthermore, a fast-slow twostep catastrophic cooling progression is found, which may reflect the transition to optically thick plasma states. The intermittent and clumpy appearance of coronal rain at coronal heights becomes more continuous and persistent at chromospheric heights just before impact, in agreement with previous observations above sunspots. This change of character is mainly due to a funnel effect from the observed expansion of the magnetic field at low heights. Strong density inhomogeneities on spatial scales of 0.2 ′′ − 0.5 ′′ are found, in which TR to chromospheric temperature transition occurs at the lowest detectable scales. The shape of the distribution of coronal rain widths is found to be independent of temperature with peaks close to the resolution limit of each telescope, ranging from 0.2 ′′ to 0.8 ′′ . However we find a sharp increase of clump numbers at the coolest wavelengths and especially at higher resolution, suggesting that the bulk of the rain distribution remains undetected. Rain clumps appear organised in strands. Such structure is not limited to chromospheric temperatures but extends at least to TR temperatures as well, suggesting an important role of thermal instability in the shaping of fundamental loop substructure. At the smallest detected scales

Reported observations in Hα, Ca II H and K or or other chromospheric lines of coronal rain trace back to the days of the Skylab mission. Offering a high contrast in intensity with respect to the background (either bright in emission if observed at the limb, or dark in absorption if observed on disk) these cool blobs are often observed falling down from high coronal heights above active regions. A physical explanation for this spectacular phenomenon has been put forward thanks to numerical simulations of loops with footpoint concentrated heating, a heating scenario in which cool condensations naturally form in the corona. This effect has been termed "catastrophic cooling" and is the predominant explanation for coronal rain. In this work we further investigate the link between this phenomenon and the heating mechanisms acting in the corona. We start by analyzing observations of coronal rain at the limb in the Ca II H line performed by the Hinode satellite. We then compare the observations with 1.5-dimensional MHD simulations of loops being heated by small-scale discrete events concentrated towards the footpoints (that could come, for instance, from magnetic reconnection events), and by Alfvén waves generated at the photosphere. It is found that if a loop is heated predominantly from Alfvén waves coronal rain is inhibited due to the characteristic uniform heating they produce. Hence coronal rain may not only point to the spatial distribution of the heating in coronal loops but also to the agent of the heating itself. We thus propose coronal rain as a marker for coronal heating mechanisms.

High-resolution imaging-spectroscopy movies of solar active region NOAA 10998 obtained with the Crisp Imaging Spectropolarimeter at the Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope show very bright, rapidly flickering, flame-like features that appear intermittently in the wings of the Balmer Hα line in a region with moat flows and likely some flux emergence. They show up at regular Hα blue-wing bright points that outline the magnetic network, but flare upward with much larger brightness and distinct "jet" morphology seen from aside in the limbward view of these movies. We classify these features as Ellerman bombs and present a morphological study of their appearance at the unprecedented spatial, temporal, and spectral resolution of these observations. The bombs appear along the magnetic network with footpoint extents up to 900 km. They show apparent travel away from the spot along the pre-existing network at speeds of about 1 km s −1 . The bombs flare repetitively with much rapid variation at timescales of seconds only, in the form of upward jet-shaped brightness features. These reach heights of 600-1200 km and tend to show blueshifts; some show bi-directional Doppler signature and some seem accompanied with an Hα surge. They are not seen in the core of Hα due to shielding by overlying chromospheric fibrils. The network where they originate has normal properties. The morphology of these jets strongly supports deep-seated photospheric reconnection of emergent or moat-driven magnetic flux with pre-existing strong vertical network fields as the mechanism underlying the Ellerman bomb phenomenon.

We use high-resolution imaging spectroscopy with the Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope (SST) to study the transient brightenings of the wings of the Balmer Hα line in emerging active regions that are called Ellerman bombs. Simultaneous sampling of Ca II 8542Å with the SST confirms that most Ellerman bombs occur also in the wings of this line, but with markedly different morphology. Simultaneous images from the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) show that Ellerman bombs are also detectable in the photospheric 1700Å continuum, again with differing morphology. They are also observable in 1600Å SDO images, but with much contamination from C IV emission in transitionregion features. Simultaneous SST spectropolarimetry in Fe I 6301Å shows that Ellerman bombs occur at sites of strong-field magnetic flux cancelation between small bipolar strong-field patches that rapidly move together over the solar surface. Simultaneous SDO images in He II 304Å, Fe IX 171Å, and Fe XIV 211Å show no clear effect of the Ellerman bombs on the overlying transition region and corona. These results strengthen our earlier suggestion, based on Hα morphology alone, that the Ellerman bomb phenomenon is a purely photospheric reconnection phenomenon.